A Simplicity Guide To Cleaning

 Believe it or not there is a way to keep your house sparkly clean while not only saving yourself money, but by giving the environment a break as well. In previous articles I've said how bad commercial products, such as Windex and Bleach, really are. Adding it up cleaning products can be expensive, plus they might cost you even more money in the long run! Cleaning doesn't need to be so complicated with a different product for different jobs, you only need a few basic ingredients that are nontoxic for you, the environment, and your family.

The Life Cycle of a Windex Bottle

We'll begin our journey in the factories where the plastic Windex bottles are made. PETE plastic or Polyethylene terephthalate, identified by the number one, is known to leach harmful chemicals into most any liquid if stored at a warm temperature. One chemical, DEHA (Diethylhydroxylamine), has been shown to cause liver problems, reproductive issues, and is suspected to cause cancer. PET, or PETE plastic is used for soft drink bottles, water bottles, some juice containers, sports drinks, mouthwash, ketchup, and salad dressing. It can also be found in some food jars such as peanut butter, jelly, and pickles as well as in microwavable food trays. This plastic is made in oil refineries, workers are surrounded by the toxic fumes causing serious health problems for them. The people living in the vicinity of these plants also suffer, about as much as the workers inside do.  

 This is a small video on plastic bottles by How It's Made.    

   

 After the plastic bottles are made they are shipped to one of S.C. Johnson's 70 factories, which are spread world wide. In these factories ingredients such as Water, Isopropyl Alcohol, Propylene Glycol, 2-Hexoxyethanol, Ammonium Hydroxide, Mirapol® Surf S-210, Videt EGM,  Sodium C14-17 Sec-Alkyl Sulfonate, Fragrance from SC Johnson Fragrance Palette, and Liquitint® Sky Blue Dye are mixed together. S.C Johnson is very secretive about how any of their products are actually made, how their factory workers are actually treated, and what is even in their products. Since S.C. Johnson is such a huge company they are the only ones talking about how their employees are treated, being a multimillion corporation, they sugar coat everything! Ammonia gas is toxic if breathed in, sometimes even fatal. It also has a corrosive effect on the skin and eyes, and being exposed to it over time can harm the respiratory system. So for the factory workers to be safe they would pretty much need to be dressed like astronauts! But since big companies are so worried about expenses, the workers are probably around these toxic chemicals with little to no protective equipment on! The fragrance added to Windex, or any S.C. Johnson company, could even be more dangerous than the ammonia! We can't be sure since they keep their fragrance ingredients proprietary.
 This is a great spoof video by Women's Voices For The Earth that really makes fun of S.C. Johnson and their "proprietary" fragrances.

 Then, after we use Windex and spray it around and breathe it in a bit, the plastic spray bottle heads right to the landfill to sit there for a thousand or so years. And though Windex claims to use 50% post consumer recycled material, that's impossible since reprocessed polythelene terephthalate loses some of it's properties when recycled so the amount of recycled content can't exceed 10%. Also the plastic used for recycling is mostly leftovers from the factory, not the bottles that you put in the recycling bin due to impurities.
 I for one don't believe that small children (or anyone) should breath this stuff in! Next time you think about spritzing any S.C. Johnson product in your home, think twice before you breathe those potential cancer causing chemicals in!

Resources 

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate
• http://www.medicinenet.com/plastic/page2.htm
• Tapped The Movie 
• https://www.scjohnson.com/en/company/locations.aspx 
• http://www.whatsinsidescjohnson.com/en-us/products-by-brand/windex/windex-original-glass-cleaner.aspx 
• https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=health+effects+of+ammonia    

  

The Story Of Bleach

 It was a dark and stormy night in 1789, lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, and in a small village called Javelle located in Paris a chemist was busy at work. This chemist's name was Claude Louis Berthollet, and he was on the verge of a great scientific breakthrough! This man was favored by Napoleon, and at this moment Claude was perfecting a new form of evil. "Ha ha!" he thunders allowed, "I have done it! A poison no one will expect, and everyone will want to use it!" He throws his head back and laughs maniacally before continuing his rant. "I will now be able to sit back and enjoy myself as humans kill themselves!" As he turns around and removes his protective mask we can see that this man is no human being, but an alien! "I call this masterpiece, Chlorine bleach!"

 Alright maybe I fabricated a bit of that story, but some of it is true! Chlorine bleach (or more technically sodium hypochlorite) was invented by Claude Louis Berthollet in 1789, but he definitely was not an alien! Claude Louis Berthollet was an Italian born French chemist favored by Napoleon around the time of the French Revolution. And though chlorine bleach was invented in Javelle (Now called Javel), there is no proof that it was invented on a dark and stormy night. And no, the inventor did not mean for chlorine bleach to be a poison, but that pretty much is what it has become today!
 Many companies today sell chlorine bleach, but the ingredients aren't just chlorine and water! Let's take a look at Clorox, and the chemicals they have in their bleach.

July - Ban Unsafe Cleaning Products

 Everyone has cleaning products that they use at home, but barely anyone ever questions the safety of these products. If you've ever turned these bottles over and read the label, they don't offer much information. Often times there's nothing further than a "Keep out of reach of children" label. We all take for granted that industry and government regulators have our best interest in mind, but that couldn't be farther from the truth! Companies aren't required to disclose all there ingredients if they claim that the recipe is proprietary (which nearly all companies do). I mean who would want to use their products, if the consumers found out that the main ingredient caused cancer? They would go out of business because no one would want to buy it! But we, the consumer, continue to blindly spritz about our poison air freshener, because it smells good! It is time to take our blind fold off and realize that what we're using is poisonous garbage that only harms us and makes the corporation's wallets fatter!